[PDF] Libraries Of The South eBook

Author : Cheryl Knott
Publisher : UMass + ORM
Page : 269 pages
File Size : 25,7 MB
Release : 2017-02-14
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1613764332

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Americans tend to imagine their public libraries as time-honored advocates of equitable access to information for all. Through much of the twentieth century, however, many black Americans were denied access to public libraries or allowed admittance only to separate and smaller buildings and collections. While scholars have examined and continue to uncover the history of school segregation, there has been much less research published on the segregation of public libraries in the Jim Crow South. In fact, much of the writing on public library history has failed to note these racial exclusions. In Not Free, Not for All, Cheryl Knott traces the establishment, growth, and eventual demise of separate public libraries for African Americans in the South, disrupting the popular image of the American public library as historically welcoming readers from all walks of life. Using institutional records, contemporaneous newspaper and magazine articles, and other primary sources together with scholarly work in the fields of print culture and civil rights history, Knott reconstructs a complex story involving both animosity and cooperation among whites and blacks who valued what libraries had to offer. African American library advocates, staff, and users emerge as the creators of their own separate collections and services with both symbolic and material importance, even as they worked toward dismantling those very institutions during the era of desegregation.

Author : Dallas Hanbury
Publisher : Lexington Books
Page : 186 pages
File Size : 46,30 MB
Release : 2019-12-04
Category : History
ISBN : 9781498586283

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This book examines the history of Southern public libraries' development from 1898-1963. It analyzes their role in institutionalizing segregation, their complex and protracted efforts to integrate these institutions, and their post-integration attempts to deal with the consequences of having practiced segregation.

Author : David M. Battles
Publisher : Scarecrow Press
Page : 182 pages
File Size : 26,26 MB
Release : 2009
Category : History
ISBN : 0810862476

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The story of African Americans' long struggle to attain civil rights, particularly in the South, is well documented. The story of the public library movement in America is also well documented. However, the story of the African American struggle to access public libraries in the South is limited; much of what has been written was told in piecemeal fashion in short studies or confined to a particular southern state.

Author : Shirley A. Wiegand
Publisher : LSU Press
Page : 281 pages
File Size : 17,74 MB
Release : 2018-04-14
Category : History
ISBN : 0807168688

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In The Desegregation of Public Libraries in the Jim Crow South, Wayne A. and Shirley A. Wiegand tell the comprehensive story of the integration of southern public libraries. As in other efforts to integrate civic institutions in the 1950s and 1960s, the determination of local activists won the battle against segregation in libraries. In particular, the willingness of young black community members to take part in organized protests and direct actions ensured that local libraries would become genuinely free to all citizens. The Wiegands trace the struggle for equal access to the years before the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, when black activists in the South focused their efforts on equalizing accommodations, rather than on the more daunting—and dangerous—task of undoing segregation. After the ruling, momentum for vigorously pursuing equality grew, and black organizations shifted to more direct challenges to the system, including public library sit-ins and lawsuits against library systems. Although local groups often took direction from larger civil rights organizations, the energy, courage, and determination of younger black community members ensured the eventual desegregation of Jim Crow public libraries. The Wiegands examine the library desegregation movement in several southern cities and states, revealing the ways that individual communities negotiated—mostly peacefully, sometimes violently—the integration of local public libraries. This study adds a new chapter to the history of civil rights activism in the mid-twentieth century and celebrates the resolve of community activists as it weaves the account of racial discrimination in public libraries through the national narrative of the civil rights movement.